Memories From The Set: Legit's DJ Qualls Recalls Roles On Lost, Scrubs, Breaking Bad And More

Scrubs

Some misplaced guidance from the NBC comedy's hair-and-makeup department taught Qualls an important lesson. "They talked me into going on camera with no hair or makeup, just how I showed up in the morning," he says. "I got a fan letter from England after it aired, saying, 'I loved you on Scrubs. Your hair was rather unfortunate. I hope it was a wig.' It taught me never to be talked into that again." 

Criminal Minds

Qualls "played totally against type" when he was Richard Slessman, a convicted serial rapist who's one of two UnSubs in the Season 1 episode. "And that's what I learned about television," says the actor, who's had parts in movies like Road Trip, The New Guy and Hustle & Flow. "Films will let you go away from type only very minimally. But television, especially in a guest spot, you can really stretch and get people to see you in a different way."

Lost

Qualls' turn as Johnny came about after Jorge Garcia, with whom he'd acted in an independent film called Little Athens, suggested him for the role of Hurley's Mr. Cluck co-worker. "One of my biggest regrets in my career is I didn't steal that chicken shirt [from] Mr. Cluck's," the actor says. "I almost took it, but at the last minute I chickened out. I could probably retire by selling it on eBay."

My Name is Earl

"I remember that Jaime Pressly kept introducing herself to me," Qualls says of his visit to Camden County, a three-episode stint in which he played Joy's brother-in-law Ray-Ray. "And I was like, 'What? Why are you... I know you. I've known you for like 10 years.' It just put me on a weird guard." Though he maintains he had fun on the quirky sitcom, Qualls says he always "felt like I was playing in somebody else's yard."

The Big Bang Theory

Qualls' performance as a grad student Sheldon hires to pretend to be his drug-addicted cousin wasn't the actor's first experience with the nerdy comedy. "I studio-tested against Jim Parsons for that role. It came down to me and him. And they made us read, before all of the CBS studio executives, in front of each other," he says. "He went before me. And I turned to [creator] Chuck Lorre afterward and I was like, 'I'm not going to get this part. I can't read.' And he was like, 'Oh no, you're not going to get this part – but you have to read.'" The "horrifying" experience so affected Qualls that "that was the last time I tested."

Breaking Bad

The extended cold open to Season 2's "Better Call Saul" episode of the AMC hit meant everyone – including guest star Qualls, who played an undercover Albuquerque police officer involved in busting Badger – had to step up. The scene was "a six-minute, no-cut take, a cold open with all of these trucks and things orchestrated in the background... so if you messed up, you had to start over. It was a lot of pressure." 

Memphis Beat

Qualls' Officer Danny spent one hour of the TNT drama caring for a baby. "A couple of times in my career, I've had to do things that I haven't yet done in real life. One of them was to be a surrogate parent in that episode," he tells TVLine. And after bonding with the infants who played the baby, "All the feelings that you would have when this happened to you in real life come flooding out. And I cried [in that scene], when I had to give her up... I just lost it."

Perception

Qualls' performance as cybercrime specialist Rudy Fleckner, admittedly, wasn't his finest. "I got really sick," he remembers, "to the point that I disintegrated immediately. Like, over the course of 15 minutes, I couldn't put a cell phone in an evidence bag." Unfortunately, this wasn't one of those days where his character just stood in the corner of a scene. "I had this big speech and all these actions attached to the words, and I couldn't get through it. So we had to go line by line." Thank goodness for a talented post-production team. "The editors on that show are geniuses," he adds. "Because you can't tell anything."

Hawaii Five-0

While taping the CBS procedural on location in Hawaii, Qualls was part of a location shoot in a valley where Jurassic Park was filmed. "So we're there, and there are all these giant ape faces in the rock formations," he says – except the cast and crew have hung out there so often, they've become used to the area's natural beauty. "And apparently, it's famous for wild, hallucinogenic mushrooms," he recalls. "One of the crew guys pulled me aside and was like, 'Dude, did you eat a mushroom?'" (The answer, by the way, was no.) "Finally I had to take my cell phone and isolate the ape faces in pictures.'"

Supernatural

The recurring part of hunter-turned-werewolf Garth has awarded Qualls quite a following among fans of the long-running CW drama – which is ironic, considering he had no interest in the gig at first. "They showed me an episode of it, and I was like, 'So it's really hot dudes chasing bad things, killing monsters. Oh yes, I fit into that perfectly.' I'm like, 'I'm not going to be on a show where I'm not only less handsome than everybody, but like amazingly less handsome than everybody.'" But meeting Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who are "such sweet dudes," changed his mind.

Legit

On tap this season for Qualls' Billy: "My character gets to have a girlfriend for the first time in his life," the actor says. "I had to learn how to operate a mechanical sex toy. At this point, I'm so immune to it. So I'm just like, 'Yeah, mechanical. OK. I got it.'" And though Qualls is used to the comedy's all-out insanity, he had sympathy for his guest star. "This poor girl comes on, and she has to be in a mechanical sex swing. But actually, the scene winds up being really sweet. That's the thing the show does that is kind of a mind-screwer: All the things that we do that seem gross wind up really sweet."